Welcome to Jobless America!
The U.S. manufacturing sector lost 95,000 jobs in April, 2003, alone,
according to the Washington Post (05/04/03), “Where Have All the Jobs
Gone?,” by Steven Pearlstein. On top of that, financial service
companies plan to transfer 500,000 jobs, or 8 percent of total
employment, to foreign countries such as India and China over the next
five years. Businesses and government also slashed their payrolls by
48,000 workers, in April.
These job loss trends are a direct result of Gross National Greed
spurred on, in part, by federal government trade policies that have
placed predatory corporate profiteering and Wall St. speculating before
the broader national good. This is so even though the “Preamble” of the
U.S. Constitution promotes the “general welfare” as one of its noblest
tenets.
How is the “general welfare” served, and the Republic, too, when the
highest value in the land isn’t the national interest, but the
corporate and globalized interests of these scheming grave diggers of
America?
Closer to home, the bankruptcy sale of Bethlehem Steel, to the ISG
Corporation of Cleveland, was recently approved for $ 1.5 billion price
tag. This means the 2,800 workers, left at its Sparrows Point, Maryland
plant, can expect to be reduced shortly by at least a third of that
number by their new employer. Caps will also be put on their wages.
History is a great teacher. In its WW II heyday, the Sparrows Point
facility employed 45,000 workers: 30,000 building ships in its
waterfront department; and another 15,000 toiling in its mills. Now,
this centerpiece of a once-thriving manufacturing juggernaut, the
then-envy of the world, is fighting to stay alive. Who rusted out our
Steel Industry? [1]
Question: What are the Congress, and the Labor Bosses, at their D.C.
headquarters, doing about these worker-bashing trade policies that are
destroying our manufacturing base, and destabilizing and demoralizing
the communities that have supported them over the years?
It is a truism: No middle class, no democracy! We are starting to
resemble the “Banana Republics” of Central and South America. The gross
disparity in wealth between the classes is growing at such an alarming
rate, the statisticians can’t keep up with measuring it.
Try some anecdotal evidence. Last year, I took a tour around Manhattan
on the famed Circle Line. I struck up a conversation with a passenger
on the ship, who now lives in Jersey City, NJ. She’s a school teacher.
She recalled, “I used to live on Manhattan. I grew up on the East side.
But now to live there, you have to be either very rich or very poor.
People, like me, can’t simply afford it anymore. And, that’s very sad.”
Look around at any major U.S. city and you will see the spreading signs
of this disturbing phenomena for yourself. Gated communities are a
growth industry. Formerly solid working class enclaves are becoming
Yuppified. More workers are employed on a part time basis, without any
health or vacation benefits or job security. Once stable homegrown
industries have deserted by the thousands their urban settings, never
to return [2].
Meanwhile, a majority of our state governments are sinking under
mountains of debts. Massachusetts is reeling with a $3 billion deficit.
Its lawmakers are considering selling corporate sponsors the naming
rights to its parks and forests, including the Walden Woods
immortalized by Henry David Thoreau. What’s next? Putting fabled Bunker
Hill on the block?
Not everyone, however, is suffering. Take billionaire Ira Rennert of
the Hamptons, on Long Island, NY. He is building a luxurious $100
million waterfront vacation estate, on a 68 acre site, with 29
bedrooms. Even the New York Post, a Rupert Murdock rag, (05/04/03),
railed at his “filthy rich life” style. The kingly mansion will also
have its own power plant!
The pseudo economy, boosted by America’s dubious role as a “Global
Cop,” has made some, like Rennert “filthy rich.” Tragically, it has
also left many more behind it its wake. The Enron, WorldCom, ImClone,
Global Crossing, Adelphia, Arthur Andersen and Tyco scandals, to cite a
few, have devastated millions of workers, pensioners and investors. On
that same issue, economist Michael Burt has indicated that terrorism
across the globe has caused “less damage” to the U.S. economy, around $
50 billion, as compared to the $ 6 trillion in lost wealth that
resulted directly from the endemic corporate scandals (“High Cost of
Corporate Crime,” Business Finance, 10/02, Fay Hansen).
Wall Street insiders, however, know how to take care of their own. None
of the creeps responsible for bringing down those corporate shams has
yet to serve a single day in jail. Where is the justice, too, in all of
that?
Up until WW II, our economy mostly followed the “American System,” as
championed by the likes of Henry C. Carey of Philadelphia, an advisor
to President Abraham Lincoln. As a result, with tariffs and
protectionism in place, America prospered and became a great industrial
giant, along with creating the highest standard of living in the world
for its workers.
Today, it’s the Free Trade ideology, the prime tool of the globalists,
that dominates the markets. It has looted our industrial capacity,
stolen the best jobs from our workers, cost us our sovereignty, opened
up our country to cheap imports and further corrupted our politics.
With its intellectual origins rooted in the evils of British
imperialism, Free Trade, must be treated as a mortal enemy of the
Republic. It must be eradicated!
Finally, a Jobless America is an America at risk!
© William Hughes 2002
William Hughes is the author of “Andrew Jackson vs. New World Order” (Authors Choice Press) and “Baltimore Iconoclast” (Writer’s Showcase), which are availabel online. He can be reached at liamhughes@mindspring.com.
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